By Bill Byrd
MORGANTOWN — Widening the discussion about homeland security to include ordinary Americans, local first-responders, private industry and business will only make the country safer in an age of terrorism, says Stephen E. Flynn.
A senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Flynn argues it’s time “to rethink how we’re doing homeland security and the priorities that have been assigned to it.”
Flynn teaches at Stanford University and formerly worked on the National Security Council.
The courageous action taken by the passengers on the doomed United Airlines Flight 93 is an example of how informed citizens can defend the nation.
They knew, by calling family and friends, that jet planes were being used by terrorists that day as missiles to strike targets in New York and Washington.
Armed with that information, “They kept that plane from reaching its ultimate target, which almost certainly was the nation’s capital,” Flynn said, by charging the cockpit.
The struggle with the terrorist hijackers forced the plane down, killing all aboard but preventing what possibly could have been a much greater loss of life.
It is everyday Americans who will most likely, once again, be on the front lines and be the first to respond to another catastrophic attack by terrorists, Flynn told an audience at a summit on Homeland Security.
The lesson that professional security experts and first-responders should draw from Flight 93 is that educating and working with the public will yield new resources and ideas, he said.
“We need to begin the process of changing our strategic approach of managing our response to terrorism,” Flynn said.
Terrorists are going to confront us in our civil and economic spheres of life, he said.
The nation should focus more on measures to improve its resilience in the face of such a threat. It should invest in its vital infrastructure, such as better communication systems for first-responders, he said.
Protecting and making power grids more redundant, improving public health resources and educating citizens are good long-term investments in domestic security in the case of another terrorist attack — or a natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, Flynn said.
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, organized the summit, the third such one he has held in the state since 2003.
Nearly 300 first-responders, school officials, scientists, health experts, private sector security experts and government officials from around the state attended the two-day event at West Virginia University. The state Department of Military Affairs and the Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation joined WVU and Rockefeller in sponsoring the conference.
E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.
